Gabrielle Miller
28 November 2017
English 111
Reading Narrative Essay
My Life as a Reader
When I was a bright blue eyed little girl, my parents or their friends would always read a fairy tale to me as I was trying to fall asleep. Being read to as a child allowed me to form a quite large imagination, and it helped development my love for reading that I still have today. My love for reading has not changed in almost eighteen years, and most people at my age would jump to go to a party but not me, I choose to stay home, and find a good book. I enjoy reading to my younger siblings because I know the impact reading can have on someone, and I hope it impacts them just like it did me. I prefer to have a hard copy of a book or to have it on my tablet versus having an audio version of the same book because having a book read by a computer isn’t quite the same as holding the book and reading it yourself. In terms of reading there are many selections people can choose, I choose books over magazines, and newspapers because even though they may not state the truth all the time it is better than reading about what an celebrity is doing at this given moment in time.
During my few years of schooling, I have only learned one technique to reading for the school that stuck with me. It was called the SQR4 method. SQR4 involves skimming the chapter, then turning the title, subtitles, and even bolded words into a question, then reading that section to find the answer to the question, the going over your notes, and finally taking the chapter test that is at the end of the chapter. Before I learned this method, I used to skim through the textbook to find the answer to the questions given, so that I could be the first one done. Granted I always got the answers correct but I learned that I did not really learn anything so the next time I was given an assignment I took my time, read each section, and felt a lot better because I learned from it. Reading the assignment, I was given contributed to my success in high school, and will hopefully lead to be success in college.
My success in college will benefit from reading well because reading the material before I get to class will help me understand what the teacher is talking about while I’m there. In high school, my biggest problem with academic reading was that I felt I never understood the book or what it was talking about, so in turn I got frustrated and did not want to read. In college, I hope to push passed that, and when I do not understand something I hope to ask for help which was something I never did in high school. As far as college goes, I am not the first generation in my family to go. Both my Father and Grandfather attend Thomas Nelson but with my dreams of attending a four-year university I will be the first to attend a major college in Virginia.
While I had some previous experiences as a reader, I have learned some valuable reading strategies this semester, such as the Cornell note-taking format and the SQ4R strategy. The Cornell Note Taking method is one that main people have been taught but do not really use because they do not fully understand it. Cornell Notes helps students write their notes better and it helps to fully understand them. It allows students to quickly find what they are looking for instead of browsing through page after page. To set up a page for Cornell notes, the piece of paper being used needs to be divide into four parts. Each part has a different use. The top section should be used for the title of the notes/class, your name, and the date. The section to the left should be used for main ideas that seem like they might be on the test. The main section which is one the right used be used for taking all of the notes. Finally, the last section which is at the bottom should be used for taking a summary of the notes after the notes have been completed. To get the full effect, one should reread the right section, make sure they understand the things written in the left column, and look over the summary. Another method of reading is the SQ4R method. SQ4R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Record, Review. Survey means that one should first look at the chapter and look for titles, subtitles, or any words that are in bold that may be important later. Question means that someone turns the titles into questions, and to start looking for connections between words and titles. Read means that one should read the chapter or book fully. Recite means one should think out loud or talk to someone about what they just read to fully understand the reading. Finally, comes review which means that one should review the notes that they have taken.
Throughout this past semester I feel that I have grown as an academic writer and as a reader. I have learned several methods on how to make my work seem more professional, and how to include the authors names to make sure that I am not plagiarizing. By using the note taking methods above, I have been able to make my papers or essays have a deeper meaning, and allow the readers to connect with what I wrote. Just as I have grown there are also things that I still struggle on. I tend to make many mistakes involving commas. I either add too many or forget to add them at all. I tend to forget when I am citing a piece of work on the work cited page to make the title exactly like it is on the page. Everything that I learned in one semester of English, can help me understand the meaning behind anything that I may read later in life.